Tag Archives: Subgenius

With a name like room for love and a blurb like “Lonely Divorcé romance novelist starts affair with dangerous young rent boy” this sounded like it could be just a bad romance plot.

Both the name and the plot are lightly played up with satire within the story.

What this actually is, is an examination of two very broken people and their desire and isolation. Both characters have lost someone they love to the cruelty of others. Both characters utilise a symbiotic use of each other, Pamela feeding of raw sexuality and unpredictably for inspiration for her novels, Frank to avert a predictable dismal downward spiral in his life.

There’s a lot of focus on the sexual powerplay between the two characters and how the two switch between passive and active assertion over each other with themes of abandonment and homosexuality explored along the way.

Room For love – IlyaThe use of colour and shading in this is interesting. At first it appears quite simple as a colour coding of blue for Pamela and murky yellow for Frank but is actually used to great effect and in complex ways throughout the story to convey the characters feelings; Where it expands in wild coronas around the characters upon their they interact on equal footing or contract into geometric cubes around them when they are being restricted by the other.

The Irish artist Francis Bacon was famous for drawing figures trapped within cubes and shapes and I only mention him because he is referenced shortly after a page where the colour is used to the same effect.

The story is bleak, primarily one of exploitation and heartbreak but it’s lightly satirical of the romance genre and its dark themes never overpower the story so it comes away with a positive feeling.

Also not sure if it’s a subgenius reference or not but the Stark Fist of Removal shows up during the stories climax.